Cognitive Reappraisal: The Bridge between Cognitive Load and Emotion

Abstract

Within this integrative review, cognitive load theory (CLT) is asserted as a powerful framework for conceptualizing human cognitive processes within learning. The relationship between cognition and emotion is then examined and further integrated within the scope of CLT. Emotion regulation strategies are discussed and adaptive strategies are proposed as being of particular relevance to broadening the theoretical and practical impacts of CLT. Central to the argument of this review is the use of cognitive reappraisal as a potential mitigator of cognitive load. Cognitive reappraisal involves reframing or reassessing understandings or beliefs that underlie an emotional response, which may mitigate cognitive load imposed by maladaptive emotion. It is proposed that effectively integrating adaptive emotion regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal in our pursuit of more effective cognitive functioning will aid in the development of a more integrated model of cognition and emotion within CLT.

1. Introduction

Since its inception, cognitive load theory (CLT) has become a powerful framework for conceptualizing human cognitive processes while learning. CLT research has historically focused solely on the cognitive impacts of learning environment, effective instructional design practices, and content within the learning experience. To expand the scope of the theory and its implications for practice, recent studies have initiated exploration of interactions between cognitive load and psychosocial factors impacting well-being, including cognitive effects (e.g., uncertainty), physiological effects (e.g., stress responses), and affective effects (e.g., emotion) [1,2,3]. However, despite an expansive body of literature surrounding how emotion affects cognition [1,4,5] and neuropsychological evidence that they use the same neural architecture [6,7,8,9], there remains a dearth of literature within CLT examining the impact of affective states on cognitive load (but see [10]). Indeed, more than a decade ago, Moreno [11] articulated the need for CLT to consider motivation (i.e., processes shaping goal direction, intensity, and persistence of behavior) as an essential component of effective and efficient learning. This gap within CLT exists despite studies identifying direct effects of emotion on both working memory and mental effort, including identifying certain types of emotion tending to foster more active versus less active cognitive processing [4]. Hence, examining the dynamic changes that occur during learning and acknowledging learners’ agency for regulation may aid in expanding the scope of CLT [12].

Synthesizing the findings in the broader literature, this review argues that affective states (i.e., emotion) can have direct effects on cognitive load and therefore indirect effects on learning outcomes. Following a discussion of the major tenets of CLT and the impacts of emotion on cognition generally, this article will synthesize empirical findings implicating the impacts of emotion on cognitive load phenomena with the broader theoretical framework.

2. Cognitive Load Theory: Working Memory Limitations Affect Learning

At its core, CLT orients around a set of assumptions involving different types of cognitive processing demands as they relate to learning outcomes (e.g., comprehension, problem solving, and schema construction and automation) [13,14]. During learning, information is temporarily stored and processed within working memory [15]. Working memory involves controlled processing [16] and can be defined as “the ability to sustain goal-relevant information processing in the presence of alternative goals or other distraction”; hence, working memory capacity “serves to sustain goal-relevant processing despite the presence of competing response tendencies or distractions” [17] (p. 1527). Additionally, working memory is limited in both capacity and duration, processing only small amounts (or chunks) of information and retaining them for approximately 20–30 s [18,19,20,21]. This results in working memory gating out irrelevant information, as well as abstracting and selectively filtering what eventually becomes encoded as schemas into long-term memory [9,13,19,22]. Constraints in capacity and duration appear to be only relevant when dealing with novel information, however, as working memory limitations virtually disappear when information from long-term memory is transferred into working memory during cognitive tasks [3]. Hence, prior knowledge (i.e., long-term memory schemas or templates) effectively increases how much information can be held and processed in working memory at any given time, facilitating the manipulation of complex cognitive representations while avoiding excessive cognitive load [19,23,24]. These schemas or templates of domain-specific information grow and expand as new knowledge is integrated into larger structures. Such recursive integration forms the bedrock for the development of expertise, hence facilitating the organization of (and accessibility of) vast amounts of complex information [19]. Thus, “it is memory more than intelligence that underpins expert performance” [19] (p. 38).

Because the primary purpose of instruction is to facilitate the accumulation of critical information in long-term memory (i.e., learning), instruction that overloads and exceeds the limits of working memory—particularly relating to novel information—will ultimately be ineffective [3,10,25]. Central to CLT, therefore, is the premise that “the design of instructional materials should be aligned with learners’ limited cognitive processing resources in a way that unnecessary cognitive load is prevented and effective higher-level cognitive processes are supported whenever possible” [13] (p. 43). Because of this, inadequate instructional methods or environmental distractions during learning impose unnecessary demands on the cognitive system and hamper learning [3].

Cognitive load can be best conceptualized as a multidimensional construct involving a range of cognitive processes, including the effort and load associated with a learning task [26,27]. Mental effort involves the cognitive resources allocated and utilized for learning. Working memory capacity is depleted by mental effort but recovers after rest [28]. Mental (or cognitive) load, on the other hand, represents the total burden placed on working memory during the learning task [26,29,30].

Invested mental effort has been associated with learners’ motivation for and persistence within tasks, as well as with self-efficacy (i.e., belief in one’s ability to successfully complete a task) [10,31,32,33,34,35]. In addition to investment of mental effort, self-efficacy is also associated with cognitive load [36,37,38,39]. Specifically, intrinsic load (i.e., proceeding demands inherent to content complexity and/or productive for learning) may directly enhance self-efficacy, while extraneous load (i.e., processing unproductive for learning) may decrease it [37]. Additionally, learners’ prior knowledge mitigates cognitive load, reducing the burden placed on working memory and impacting motivational beliefs [10].

Types of Cognitive Load

Within CLT, cognitive load is typically categorized as either intrinsic or extraneous [40,41]. Both types of cognitive load are cumulative, or additive, in that any distribution of the two which in combination exceed working memory capacity results in ineffective learning [42].

Intrinsic cognitive load (ICL) refers to the demand inherent within the learning task itself (i.e., load imposed by effective instruction) relative to the prior knowledge of the learner. Learners with higher levels of prior knowledge possess well-developed schemas which enhance learners’ ability to process the information efficiently. According to Sweller, Merriënboer, and Paas [3] (p. 264), “complexity or element interactivity depends on a combination of both the nature of the information and the knowledge of the person processing the information” where interactivity is defined as “the level of interconnectedness between the information elements that need to be processed in working memory simultaneously to make sense of the learning tasks or materials” [5] (p. 342). Thus, the more challenging the information in terms of its novelty for a learner and the extent to which interactions among knowledge elements (i.e., element interactivity) must be understood for comprehension, the greater the level of ICL [41]. Effective instructional procedures, therefore, aim to reduce unnecessary levels of element interactivity [3,43].

Whereas ICL reflects the inherent knowledge complexity within a learning task for a given learner, extraneous cognitive load (ECL) reflects information processing imposed by instruction or the environment that does not contribute to learning (e.g., poorly designed instruction, distracting learning environment, etc.) [41,44,45,46]. This involves not only how information is presented but also what is required of the learner via instructional procedures. Because of this, ECL (unlike ICL) can be changed simply by changing instructional procedures.

Recent work by Klepsch and Seufert [4,12,47] further delineates cognitive load into passive and active states. Specifically, cognitive load experienced can be due either to the learner actively investing cognitive resources (i.e., mental effort) or passively experienced load (i.e., mental load). In their words, “While mental load reflects the task-centered dimension, which is determined externally by the task, mental effort is human-centered, and thus determined internally and dependent on learner’s decisions and characteristics” [4] (p. 2). Hence, actively investing cognitive resources within the learning process (i.e., mental effort) requires a more self-regulated approach to learning. This additional perspective provides valuable insight into the interaction between emotion regulation within cognitive processes as it relates to cognitive load experienced.

3. Emotions Affect Learning and Cognition

Emotions are multidimensional phenomena involving “sets of coordinated psychological [or subjective] processes, including affective, cognitive, physiological, motivation, and expressive components” [48] (p. 110) (see also [49,50]), including reactions to both external stimuli and internal mental representations [51]. Indeed, emotional information/material “constitutes much of the information we process daily” [52] (p. 1). Because emotions have the capacity of promoting social and moral behavior [53] and are central to achievement strivings [48,54], emotions can also be conceptualized as action tendencies that link actions and behaviors [55,56]. Thus, emotions inherently involve subjective (or psychological) feeling experiences and physiological expressions, as well as behavioral tendencies [53,57]. They are dynamic in nature, encompassing complex motivational and behavioral characteristics/aspects [55]. In general, emotions arise from a cognitive appraisal of the object, person, or situation associated with the emotion, particularly in terms of how it relates to one’s well-being [53,58].

Two core dimensions constitute the nature and function of emotion: valence (e.g., pleasant vs. unpleasant) and arousal (e.g., intensity of emotion; activating vs. deactivating) [55,56,59]. Positive states (i.e., pleasant valence) include emotions such as joy, excitement, and enjoyment, whereas negative states (i.e., unpleasant valence) are associated with emotions such as frustration, anger, and sadness. Further, higher arousal (i.e., activating) emotions, such as anger, are delineated from lower arousal (i.e., deactivating) emotions, such as boredom [60]. Emotions vary from individual to individual [61] yet can be influenced through social interactions [62] and can even be considered contagious within collaborative learning environments, eliciting similar valence and arousal among groups of people [63].

Depending on the context or situation, emotions can be either helpful (i.e., adaptive) or harmful (i.e., maladaptive) [64]. Yet, not all negative emotions are maladaptive or unproductive, and not all positive emotions are adaptive [65]. For example, Plass and Kaplan [55] assert that “moderate and manageable levels of stress and [state-related] anxiety can be adaptive as part of the motivation process of certain individuals in some learning tasks” (p. 148). Within academic contexts, such feelings are generally associated with fear of failure within performance and/or evaluation situations [66,67,68,69,70,71]. Academic anxiety within these contexts could potentially trigger a ‘fight’ rather than ‘flight’ response to academic challenges and setback. If this were to be the case, academic anxiety resulting in ‘fight’ responses to challenges could foster more determined engagement and perseverance, which would be positively associated with academic resilience [72]. The critical factor seems to be the emotion regulation strategy employed, as maladaptive emotion regulation strategies are generally more strongly associated with psychopathology than adaptive strategies [73]. In particular, while effective emotion regulation tends to be more problematic among mood related disorders such as clinical anxiety or depression, implementation of adaptive emotion regulation strategies can play a central role in the management of psychopathology. Hence, employing adaptive regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal may help reorient or moderate maladaptive emotions such as state-related anxiety in situations of stress [64].

Furthermore, emotional states can further be distinguished as either integral or incidental, with both states being induced via a stimulus [53,74,75,76]. Integral emotional states are associated with an object of decision or judgment. Incidental emotional states, on the other hand, are not related to the object of decision or judgement (e.g., pre-existing moods and/or chronic emotional dispositions [53]. Regarding integral and incidental emotions, Blanchette and Richards [74] hypothesize that “incidental emotion may focus attention away from task-relevant information while integral emotion may focus attention towards task-relevant information” (p. 580). Further, incidental emotion appears to impair logicality, while integral emotion appears to facilitate logicality [53,74].

3.1. Emotion and Working Memory

While emotion in general has not been extensively explored in relation to its impact on working memory, research has shown that emotions consume limited working memory resources via focusing attention on the object of the emotion and influence the storage and retrieval of information [48].

According to Plass and Kalyuga [5], the valence of emotion often matters. For example, emotions may affect memory by either broadening or narrowing cognitive resources. Whereas negative emotions may limit learning by increasing load on working memory via their propensity to narrow and focus attention, positive emotions may reduce load on working memory by expanding and consolidating cognitive resources, facilitating more efficient recall and application of information from long-term memory to the learning task at hand [1,5,77]. Similarly, negative emotions have been associated with task-irrelevant thinking and decreased fluency in performance, whereas positive emotions have been shown to increase fluency and reduce task-irrelevant thinking [48,78,79,80].

Further, valence of emotion can influence retrieval and impact motivation. For example, positive emotions tend to facilitate the retrieval of positive self- and task-related information. Likewise, negative emotions tend to facilitate the retrieval of negative information (e.g., mood-congruent retrieval) [48,81]. According to Blanchette and Richards [74], interpretation, judgment, reasoning, and decision-making are important cognitive tools we use to form coherent representations of the world. Each of these processes are reliant upon working memory resources—they help us anticipate what is ahead and make choices about courses of action. Interpretation, judgment, reasoning, and decision-making are not solely cognitive, however. Emotion affects each of these processes.

3.2. Influence of Emotion Regulation on Cognition and Behavior

Emotion—positive or negative—has the capacity to bias cognition and thereby bias behavior [82,83]. When emotions are unhelpful, emotion regulation in the form of cognitive reappraisal can be particularly useful. Thus, though emotion can be transitory in nature, individuals have the ability to exert some measure of control on emotion, particularly when it directly relates to a goal. Indeed, emotion regulation is heavily implicated within virtually all goal-directed behavior [64].

Emotion regulation refers to the processes and stages by which the spontaneous flow of emotional responses to everyday stimuli is redirected or modified to achieve an outcome or goal [64,84,85,86]. As such, emotion regulation inherently involves cognitive change via processes that range in intentionality from deliberate and effortful to relatively automatic [60,86,87,88,89,90,91]. Indeed, Koole [86] positions emotion regulation as “one of the most far-ranging and influential processes at the interface of cognition and emotion” (p. 4). Though emotions are often portrayed as “irresistible forces that exert a sweeping influence on behavior”, research indicates “virtually every aspect of emotional processing” can be controlled, “including how emotion directs attention, the cognitive appraisals that shape emotional experience, and the physiological consequences of emotion” [86] (p. 4) (see also [92,93,94]). This is accomplished via effective emotion regulation, a capacity positively associated with many beneficial outcomes on mental and physical health, social interactions and relationships, and task and/or work performance [95,96].

According to Gross [64], emotion regulation involves a series of substeps, namely (1) perceiving the emotional response accurately (i.e., adaptive versus maladaptive), (2) valuing the emotion regulation goal, and (3) implementing the emotion regulation strategy (i.e., behavioral response or action). Each of these components must be present for successful emotion regulation to occur. Failure to regulate emotion indicates a failure within one of these three components and results in maladaptive default behavior patterns [97,98].

Within the realm of emotion regulation, six primary strategies have been identified: cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, acceptance, avoidance, rumination, and problem solving [73]. Of these, expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal have been more robustly studied [64]. For the purposes of this review, focus will be given to these two emotion regulation strategies, with particular emphasis on cognitive reappraisal (see

Table 1. Emotion Regulation (ER) Strategies of focus [64,73,74].

Type	Definition	Context
Cognitive Reappraisal	Reframing or reassessing understandings or beliefs that underly emotional responses to make them more adaptive.	-Generally considered adaptive. -Associated with positive overall well-being. -Most effective ER strategy leading to cognitive change. -Most robustly studied ER strategy from a neuroimaging perspective.
Expressive Suppression	Inhibiting or blocking emotional responses expressively or behaviorally.	-Generally considered maladaptive. -Associated with poorer health and overall well-being, anxiety, and depression. -Most frequently examined ER strategy, often via observation and self-report.

). Expressive suppression occurs when an emotional response is inhibited or blocked expressively or behaviorally [60,64]. While expressive suppression can be effective at blocking positive emotion, it has not been shown to be as effective in reducing negative or maladaptive emotions. In fact, suppression can negatively impact physical health, including higher physiological arousal, poorer overall well-being, and poorer health outcomes [60,99,100,101,102]. Further, expressive suppression can also lead to reduced emotional self-awareness, poorer memory recall, increased intrusive thoughts, and negative social consequences, including diminished interpersonal connection [100,103,104,105,106,107,108].

Because emotional responses are a product or consequence of thought (i.e., appraisals), cognitive reappraisal involves subjective evaluations, including reframing or reassessing understandings or beliefs that underlie an emotional response to make it more adaptive to the situation, bring it into better alignment with goals, or both [64,86,109]. The underlying premise of cognitive reappraisal is that if individuals can change the way they think about situations, experiences, etc., they can change the way they feel (i.e., change the emotional meaning) [109]. Indeed, cognitive reappraisal is associated with positive psychological states and mental health [110,111]. Additionally, cognitive reappraisal draws upon working memory resources [17] and includes the reappraisal of perceived control and/or value within a task [60,64,84]. As articulated by Huang et al. [60], “when it comes to emotions, [individuals] can modulate their cognitive responses to get a desired emotional experience” (p. 4). Cognitive reappraisal is generally more effective with conceptually generated emotions [109]. Except for select circumstances (e.g., high emotion intensity, particularly negative emotion), cognitive reappraisal is considered the most effective and adaptive emotion regulation strategy leading to cognitive change [64,84,109].

Because emotion regulation strategies generally fall under a self-regulated approach, using such strategies inherently involves the simultaneous use of both cognitive and metacognitive strategies. As such, emotion monitoring and regulating efforts rely on working memory resources and have thus been shown to impose cognitive load during learning [12].

4. Emotion Impacts Cognitive Load

Plass and Kalyuga [5] identify four ways in which emotion may influence or relate to cognitive load (see

Table 2. Ways Emotion Influences Cognitive Load [5].

Emotional Impacts on Cognitive Load	Description
Emotion as Extraneous Cognitive Load	Emotion competes for limited working memory resources, imposing extraneous cognitive load as task-irrelevant information.
Emotion Impacts Motivation	Emotion influences cognitive load by affecting motivation and resulting mental effort investment.
Emotion Affects Cognitive Processes	Emotion affects the cognitive processes of encoding, storage and retrieval of information, thus impacting working memory.
Emotion as Intrinsic Cognitive Load	Emotion affects intrinsic cognitive load when emotion regulation is an integral part of learning outcomes & objectives.

). First, emotion can be conceptualized as imposing ECL, competing for limited working memory resources with sources of ICL via the processing of task-irrelevant information (i.e., the emotion). Second, emotion may influence cognitive load by affecting motivation, and therefore, mental effort investment (i.e., active cognitive load) [4]. Third, emotion may affect the cognitive processes of encoding, storage, and retrieval of information, including impacting working memory through the broadening or narrowing of cognitive resources. Fourth, emotion may affect ICL, specifically when emotion regulation is an integral part of learning objectives and outcomes. For instance, some occupational training requires individuals to process or regulate emotions while performing key tasks (e.g., a physician informing a patient of a cancer diagnosis or a billing specialist dealing with an angry customer).

4.1. Cognitive Load via Emotional Task-Irrelevant Information

Emotion may influence or relate to cognitive load when it imposes an unnecessary burden via the cognitive processing of task-irrelevant information [5], especially maladaptive emotions related to scarcity and anxiety. Such emotions are likely to lead to rumination (i.e., a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy) [112,113], which sustains extraneous load over an extended or recurring way.

Internal thoughts and feelings based in scarcity (e.g., perception of not having enough time, money, resources, sleep, etc.) can disrupt and diminish individuals’ cognitive capacity to maintain attention, persist, resist distractions, modulate impulses, and self-regulate via consuming limited cognitive resources within working memory, thus contributing to task-unrelated cognitive load (e.g., ECL) [114,115,116]. In addition to impacting cognitive functioning, scarcity can also impact individuals’ sense of well-being and is often associated with individuals experiencing acute stress [114,115,116].

Anxiety often involves worry, rumination, task-irrelevant thoughts, nervousness, fear of failure, and/or poor performance. This type of anxiety is state-related and delineated from trait-related clinical anxiety and may overload working memory with ECL via decreasing attentional control and increasing counter-productive strategies and task-irrelevant thoughts and/or behavior aimed at dealing with fear of failure [1,67,117,118]. For example, higher levels of test anxiety have been shown to increase both processing and performance time while also decreasing accuracy [113,119,120]. Impaired performance and efficiency is often a result of cognitive worry (including task-irrelevant thoughts), which unnecessarily increases cognitive demand. Such cognitive interference depletes working memory resources by reducing working memory processing and storage capacity [113,117,119,120]. Hence, some forms of stress and anxiousness may decrease availability of working memory resources [121,122,123,124].

Further, much evidence points to the robust effect that anxiousness has on cognitive processes heavily dependent on working memory resources, including attention, interpretation, judgment, decision making, and reasoning [74]. When such cognitive processes are compromised by anxiety, it impacts the process through which individuals extract meaning from information [74]. Thus, the fostering of anxious thoughts potentially depletes available cognitive resources and consumes limited working memory capacity, imposing ECL [74,125]. This impacts individuals’ ability to identify, select, and maintain access to relevant information, as well as resist distractions competing for limited cognitive resources during tasks [126,127]. In sum, because anxiety and worry are attentionally demanding, they can interfere with an individual’s ability to sustain controlled attention, as well as inhibit irrelevant stimuli and responses, producing deficits in attentional control and information filtering efficiency [117,127,128,129,130]. Such impaired inhibitory control often results in irrelevant information consuming limited working memory resources, impairing task performance, and impacting fluid cognition (i.e., domain-general abilities) [127,131,132].

Brockbank and Feldon [133] further found that stress, overwhelm, and worry were positively associated with higher levels of ECL, independent of content complexity in learning contexts (i.e., ICL). While ECL was associated with motivational cost, ICL was not [133]. Further, common sources of ECL were differentially associated with negatively experienced emotional aspects of motivational cost (see also [10,37]).

How emotion impacts motivational processes is influenced by both valence and intensity within both positive (e.g., joyful, excited) and negative (e.g., sad, angry) emotions. Emotion valence and intensity can potentially contribute to task-irrelevant thoughts compared to more neutral emotions (e.g., contented, bored) [5]. As the proportion of irrelevant thoughts increases, motivation and performance suffer [132]. Similarly, stress can lead to both task-relevant and task-irrelevant thoughts. Consequently, task-oriented thinking that directs one’s thoughts to the task at hand helps mitigate anxiousness, unproductive worry and rumination, and poor performance [119,120]. As an adaptive strategy, cognitive reappraisal may encourage task-oriented thinking. Hence, thoughts (particularly emotionally based thoughts) can play an important role in the cognition–emotion relationship through either enhancing or impairing cognitive performance [5,119,120,132].

4.2. Emotion, Motivation, and Cognition

Relatedly, two additional ways in which emotion may influence or relate to cognitive load is when it impacts motivation, mental effort, and cognitive processes (including via the broadening or narrowing of cognitive resources) [5]. Indeed, learning how cognition, emotion, and motivation interact in influencing human behavior, while less understood, is a valuable endeavor [134]. Furthermore, that emotions contribute to working memory performance is also of particular relevance to motivationally based realms such as goal-directed cognitive task performance [135].

In its traditional formulation, CLT focused little on emotional or motivational constructs and “could not explain the performance of self-regulated learners who were capable of expanding on their effective cognitive capacity” [5] (p. 343) (see also [11,32]). Indeed, Moreno [11] articulated the need for CLT to consider motivation (i.e., the complex processes shaping goal direction, intensity, and persistence of behavior) as an essential component of effective and efficient learning. Research has shown how motivation and engagement—both emotionally based processes—can be enhanced by reducing cognitive load (e.g., via cognitive load reducing instructional practices), thereby positively impacting self-efficacy, valuing, planning, persistence, and mastery orientation [136].

Pessoa [134] further asserted that emotion and motivation have crucial roles in either enhancing or impairing behavior, depending on how they interact with cognitive control functions, particularly in terms of competing for limited cognitive processing resources. Because these subcomponents of cognition are mutually interacting, such ‘executive competition’ results in ‘capacity sharing’ within cognitive information processing systems, including working memory [134]. Additionally, emotion may either increase or decrease motivation for an individual to expend cognitive effort, and in this way, the relationship between emotion and cognitive load may be mediated by motivation [5].

4.3. Emotion, Regulation, and Reappraisal

The final way in which emotion may influence or relate to cognitive load is via emotion regulation [5]. Russell [56] asserts emotional episodes are psychologically constructed, rather than being biologically or socially determined. Because of this, there is substantial intrapersonal and interpersonal variation in emotional experiences, including changes over time [5]. An emotional episode is therefore dynamic, “constructed anew each time to fit its specific circumstances” [56] (p. 151).

Such episodic construction supports the notion that individuals have a certain level of control over and choice in how they cognitively appraise, reappraise, and construct emotion schemas, independent of circumstance or context. Indeed, cognitive appraisals may support individuals’ sense of autonomy: “the individual has to learn how to adapt to situational demands while preserving individual autonomy—inevitably a process guided by appraisals” [79] (p. 241). And the dynamic cognition–emotion interactions inherent within such appraisals and self-regulation may “serve as motivating forces that guide human adaptation and learning” [55] (p. 149). It is essential, therefore, to “take into account interpersonal variability, namely, the variable emotional and motivational needs and demands” of individuals, including contextual and environmental factors [55] (p. 148). Consequently, self-regulation is an important means through which effective functioning, learning, and motivation may occur, and adaptive emotion regulation is integral to this process. Such regulation is heavily influenced by both long-term and working memory functions [19]. Cognitive regulation and behavior regulation represent two key forms of self-regulation [1,137,138,139]. Yet, cognitive regulation and behavior regulation, while sharing overlapping aspects, involve important distinctions. Behavior regulation is related to simple emotion regulation or suppression of emotional responses (e.g., expressive suppression) [73,140] and, as such, suppresses expressive behavior. In contrast, cognitive regulation (e.g., cognitive reappraisal related to cognitive control) [73,141] attends to or interprets emotion-eliciting situations in ways that influence emotional responding [1]. Such cognitive regulation (e.g., cognitive reappraisal) includes reappraising maladaptive emotions or perceived costs associated with tasks, particularly difficult ones, instead of allowing such emotions to influence behavior [137,138,142]. When negative or maladaptive emotions influence behavior, focus shifts from regulating cognition to regulating behavior [1,143]. Hence, in the face of everyday challenges, individuals have the ability to cognitively regulate via reappraisal strategies.

Furthermore, while positive emotions potentially enhance motivation and cognitive functioning, negative emotions such as frustration, boredom, anxiety, and hopelessness may reduce effective working memory functioning, resulting in poorer performance, reduced learning, and longer times needed to reach mastery levels [5,65,79,144,145]. Hence, promoting emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal of maladaptive emotions can potentially enhance cognitive functioning [55]. Thus, when dealing with the challenges and difficulties common to everyday life, individuals who reappraise emotions may have lower levels of ECL than those who do not due to their ability to cognitively regulate rather than behaviorally regulate their responses to maladaptive emotions [1]. Such a reframing strategy can be utilized as many times as is needed. For example, from a cognitive perspective, stress can be conceptualized and viewed in terms of a call for action enhancing one’s awareness of the need to do something about a given state [119,146].

5. Discussion

Of the four ways emotion impacts cognitive load discussed above [5], the self-regulation strategy of cognitive reappraisal may be the most crucial in terms of conceptualizing the direct relationship between emotion and cognitive load (i.e., the cognitive–affective relationship). Indeed, Plass and Kalyuga [5] encourage the need to conceptualize adaptive emotion regulation—particularly cognitive reappraisal—within the context of CLT because any influence that disturbs information processing flow interferes with working memory [9,19,135]. Related to such flow disturbances, Kellerman et al. [147] found higher levels of cognitive load were associated with decreased activation of emotion processing centers in the brain, potentially negatively impacting ability to effectively emotionally regulate. Because emotion has been posited as being one of the main interfering factors within working memory due to the preferential processing of emotionally loaded information within working memory [9,19,135,148], utilizing adaptive emotion regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal to mitigate the negative effects of maladaptive emotion is of particular importance to managing cognitive load.

However, because cognitive reappraisal is an emotion regulation strategy involving the metacognitive process of monitoring, it draws on additional cognitive resources, potentially impacting working memory capacity [12]. Allocating working memory resources to metacognitive processes may result in ICL if it complements the learning process but may also impose ECL when it hinders the learning task, particularly when complex tasks are undertaken by novice learners [12,149]. Further, because cognitive reappraisal is a form of self-control, when individuals experience additional cognitive demands conducive to cognitive load conditions, reappraisal may be less likely to be effective if such a strategy is ‘new’ to the cognitive system (i.e., not regularly integrated into cognitive processing) because these demands may compromise the ability to utilize cognitive resources [109]. Therefore, explicit guidance regarding cognitive reappraisal strategies (including instruction, prompts, cues, and feedback) is important for creating well-equipped learners able to effectively regulate without incurring unmanageable or unhelpful levels of cognitive load [12].

6. Implications

Practicing and integrating adaptive cognitive reappraisal strategies in a way that leads to automaticity (i.e., becomes habit and imposes no appreciable cognitive load) [150] is essential [52,96]. Overall, this suggests that cognitive reappraisal strategies could potentially become productive and worthwhile theoretically, as well as in practice within CLT in terms of adaptively dealing with emotion during instruction, as well as within other contexts and interactions.

Historically, CLT research has worked under the premise that emotions “may restrict the capacity of working memory by competing with task-relevant processes” thus increasing cognitive load, decreasing transfer, and adversely impacting the learning process [3] (p. 285). If this were to be the case, what logically follows is the notion that learning is most effective when emotion is minimized or potentially eliminated from the learning environment. However, humans are fundamentally emotional beings, and as such, human learning cannot be devoid of emotion. Indeed, “emotions, stress, and uncertainty are often an integral part” of educational and professional tasks [3] (p. 285).

In some cases, it would be inherently unproductive to prevent emotion during learning [3]. For example, in many instances, vocational and professional education should be “carefully designed in such a way that learners develop professional competencies enabling them to perform professional tasks up to the standards, including the ability to deal with emotion, stress and uncertainty and to maintain overall wellbeing” [3] (p. 285). Therefore, broadening the theoretical scope of CLT to directly address emotion in cognition, including the study and integration of adaptive strategies with potential to mitigate cognitive load (particularly ECL) during learning, would indeed be a valuable endeavor.

Recent evidence toward this end indicates that targeted intervention may enhance the processing of emotionally based cognition [52,96]. Schweizer et al. [52] found that while working memory training led to gains on other working memory tasks, only working memory training with emotional material led to transferable gains with improved affective control (i.e., emotion regulation). This led to Schweizer et al. [96] asserting that “working memory capacity and the capacity to use working memory successfully in emotional contexts are partly separable cognitive abilities” (p. 5301) (see also [151,152]). Further, evidence from their study demonstrates significantly improved adaptive emotion regulation capacity as a result of targeted emotion-related working memory training. Thus, findings indicate enhancing emotion-related working memory capacity subsequently enhances emotion regulation ability due to working memory and emotion regulation sharing underlying neural circuitry, and hence “training in one context would benefit performance in the other by augmenting the efficiency of this common neural network” [96] (p. 5310). Given these promising findings, it is plausible that targeted instruction and training may not only enhance working memory and adaptive emotion regulation but potentially reduce overall cognitive load and benefit learning.

7. Conclusions

While CLT strategies have traditionally focused on modifying task complexity, instruction design, and/or learner knowledge, relatively little attention has been given within CLT research concerning how emotions and cognitive load influence one another [153]. Research indicates that “emotion modulates learning through numerous cognitive processes including motivation, attention, working memory, and long-term memory”, thus potentially significantly influencing cognitive load experience by learners [153] (p. S221). Indeed, gaining a more complete understanding of higher-level cognition will inherently involve a more in-depth examination of the integral relationship between cognition and emotion [74].

This review has provided strong evidence illustrating a dynamic and important interplay between emotion and cognition despite prior traditional distinctions categorizing them as separate and relatively unrelated functions [3,5,74]. Indeed, sparse evidence exists indicating emotion does not have an effect on higher level cognitive processes [74]. Thus, because emotion and cognition dynamically influence each other over time [65], the relationship between cognition and emotion may be better characterized in terms of a continuously interconnected yet dynamic feedback loop that is contextually influenced [55,154,155]. It is of great importance to the theoretical scope of CLT, therefore, to better understand the fundamental connectedness between emotion and cognition, including what might be included in an instructional context to facilitate adaptive emotion regulation strategies—particularly cognitive reappraisal—within a cognitive load framework.